8, July 2022
PCC-Rev Fonki Affair: If it’s true, Moderator should go and go now 0
In the book of Deuteronomy, chapter 31 vs 29, Moses, the servant of the Lord, said, “I know that after my death, you will become utterly corrupt and will turn from the way I have commanded you to follow. In the days to come, disaster will come down on you, for you will do what is evil in the Lord’s sight, making him very angry with your actions.” And it has come to pass that the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon (PCC) is living up to this prophecy.
Recent embarrassing protests by its congregants at the churches in Kumba Town and Nsimeyong, Yaoundé, prompted Cameroon Concord News Group to investigate the PCC’s activities. Over the last few weeks, we interviewed clerics, congregants and members of various committees in churches across the PCC communion.
Our detailed inquiry found that the Moderator (spiritual leader of the PCC), Rt Rev Forki Samuel Forba, is responsible for the PCC’s current chaos. We found a damning indictment of Rev Fonki’s character and leadership style. It is hard to find a reputable man or woman in the PCC who holds their Moderator with regard. We uncovered that his name conjures up worry and disgust, not adoration and holiness.
To begin, Rev Fonki Samuel Forba was an irrational choice as the PCC Moderator. During his campaign to lead the church and subsequent re-election in 2019, he ran a crusade of bribery, corruption and intimidation. Upon re-election, he organized parties where he celebrated lavishly with CPDM tendencies and danced like a seasoned Congolese band member.
Many who knew him after he was ordained as the PCC Moderator almost eight years ago muttered that he was a disaster waiting to happen, and he has confirmed those fears. A church member in Ekona opined that “I have known him for over 30 years, and many who have worked with him knew from the moment he was elected as the PCC moderator that his tenure would be a disaster, and we can all see it”. Many within the PCC say Rev Fonki is pompous, spiritually empty, possesses no integrity and doesn’t command the respect of the majority in the PCC he claims to lead.
Cameroon Concord News Group now understands that the shocking protests captured on video in PC Kumba Town are a consequence of Rev Fonki’s dubious direct actions. The pastor of PC Kumba Town is a certain Rev Mary Wose Nduma, who is notorious for being devoid of honesty and transcendence. PC Kumba Town congregants confided to this publication that the Chairwoman of their church had repeatedly impeded Rev Mary Wose’s attempts to loot church funds. This had led to both being on each others’ throats for months until things boiled over some weeks ago when church members carried out a mass demonstration calling for Rev Mary Wose to leave their church.
Speaking about Rev Mary Wose, one of her congregants said, “Everyone here knows that she has a less than holy relationship with the Moderator. It is shameful that they are involved in shady financial dealings. The Moderator brought her here because we are a big church, so she can abuse our funds, but that will not work. She has to go now.”
The situation in PC Kumba Town is now thorny. Members of this Church want Pastor Mary Wose gone, but she and her Moderator are not heeding the people’s requests and anger. Last week, the church members led a protest during a live sermon by Pastor Mary Wose. A pastor with godliness, ability and stature might have shrugged the protest off, but Rev Mary Wose is not that pastor. Her stubbornness and sense of entitlement have led her to this place of shame. She believes that her personal but unholy relationship with the Moderator will ultimately triumph, but she is about to discover that PC Kumba Town members mean business.
The incidents in Kumba Town seem to be playing out in PC Nsimeyong, Yaoundé also, where Rev Fonki has appointed a fellow sinful offender, Rev Emmanuel Masok. Rev Masok’s congregants say he is vulgar, violent, and a channel for fraudulent and unholy activities. Rev Masok’s case is a holy emergency that must be dealt with without delay as his congregants have prayed and fasted with no noticeable results. A member of PC Nsimeyong noted that “Rev Masok is an embarrassment. To say Masok is a pastor is an insult to that noble profession, and he is a shameless crook and womaniser.”
Talking to many within the PCC, the game is simple. Rev Fonki Samuel Forba appoints key allies to big churches, so he gets financial kickbacks from them. This is shameful and distasteful. Rev Fonki is a man ruled by the quest for primitive material consumption, and he owns many properties acquired from his proceeds of theft of Church funds. For a man of God, this is dishonorable, sinful and criminal.
Rev Fonki has appointed countless mediocrities to many top positions in the church. His appointees, like him, have no fear of God in them and thrive on deception and theft of Church money. The Presbyterian Church in Cameroon is now at the mercy of Rev Fonki’s reckless quest for indulgence.
The many mediocrities that Rev Fonki has airlifted to senior positions in the Presbyterian Synod and several presbyteries are not there for their creative talents and godly powers but for their talent to aid and abet his criminal and satanic endeavours. These co-criminals will not tell him to go or persuade him to discontinue his disgraceful proclivities because they only have their positions for as long as he hangs on to his.
The primary reason his continued stay in office as Moderator is because of corrupt, lazy and intellectually questionable PCC Synod. Rev Fonki has installed his close lieutenants in the Synod; they are nothing more than hand clappers and are too cowardly to move against a disgraced and outrageous Moderator.
Time is the most precious commodity if the Presbyterian Church is to survive in its current format and structure. Members of the Presbyterian Communion can mobilize supporters, sympathizers and genuine Christians that may end Rev Fonki’s reign of terror, theft, and criminality. But they need to be bold.
Everyday Rev Fonki remains in power; a long, sharp, sturdy nail is driven into the coffin of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon. He has presided over eight turbulent years, during which the number of active Christians in the PCC is declining alarmingly. And this doesn’t seem to bother him.
PCC members must know that Rev Fonki has no interest in spirituality, honesty and the growth of their church, and he is only interested in growing his wealth and that of his friends within the church. And protests should be a new norm in all churches to force him and his co-criminals out of their church.
By Isong Asu
Cameroon Concord News Group Senior Political Researcher
In part 2 of this series, Cameroon Concord will look at Rev Fonki’s choice of PCC Communication Secretary and his plans to ensure his legacy of harm and criminality continues after he leaves office in 2024.
23, July 2022
PCC Cameroon under Rev Fonki: Corruption runs rampant. Who should we hold responsible? 0
In The Pursuit of God, A.W. Tozer wrote, “the world is perishing for lack of the knowledge of God, and the Church is famishing for want of His Presence.” It is a demonstrable fact that the lack of knowledge and Presence of God has characterized the leadership of the Presbyterian Church in Cameroon (PCC) since 2014. And this tragedy does not look like ending soon.
The Presbyterian Church in Cameroon has an archaic law that the position of Moderator rotates between the Northwest and Southwest regions of Cameroon. The genesis of this rule is politics, not spiritual, and this law is illogical and ridiculous. The current Moderator and leader of the Church, Rev Fonki Samuel Forba, despite his name, says he is from Akwaya and presented himself when he campaigned for the role of Moderator of the PCC as a candidate from the Southwest region.
It is pointless to state the obvious now, but Rev Fonki was never a treasured leader when he became Moderator of the PCC. He won the Moderatorship because Rev Abwenzoh W. Membong and Rev Besong Johnson Tabe could not sort themselves out before the election. Also, many in the Church, particularly those from the Southwest caucus, didn’t consider the boring details of scrutinizing the candidates before the election in 2014.
Cameroon Concord News Group has been informed that since his rise to the top, Rev Fonki excises power without responsibility. He commands almost complete loyalty by cramming the top positions in the PCC with unintelligent and spiritually vacuous nobodies. The Synod of the PCC and a majority of the pastors heading presbyteries throughout the national territory are all active and willing arm of the Fonkian enterprise. Most pastors in strategic positions and large congregations in the PCC have been put there by Rev Fonki Samuel Forba as privatized propagandists, apologists, bullies, and infiltrators. These co-criminals see Fonki as one of their own and love him dearly. With undiluted assurance and protection from his subjects, he is free to wreck the PCC, and he is doing so astoundingly.
Rev Fonki has a dark and devilish mindset with CPDM propensities and tends to transfer adversaries or intellectual and spiritual superiors to inaccessible territories. Cameroon Concord News Group can reveal that Rev Besong Johnson Tabe, who was once the Secretary of the Committee of the Ministry, is now languishing in Barombi Kang, a pocket-sized rural community on the fringes of Kumba. Rev Mokoko Mbue, a former Communications Secretary and one of the rising stars of the PCC communion is now in exile precisely in a congregation in Bafousam.
Church outsiders have sometimes questioned the management skills of many a past Moderator. But for the first time, PCC congregants are now openly questioning their Moderator’s spirituality and suitability for office. A member of PC Mamfe Town said, “It is beyond obvious that he has no spiritual bone in his body. We have to pray that 2024 comes soon for him to leave our Church”.
Recent events in PC Kumba Town where the congregants and Chairwoman pushed for the disgraced Pastor Mary Wose to leave their congregation have attracted commentaries and under-the-table talk from around the globe. Still, loud silence is the only response from the Moderator. Why? The Moderator’s take on the matter betrays his determination to force Mary Wose upon the Church in PC Kumba Town. The issue in Kumba is so scandalous that practicing witchcraft professionals have now been consulted by both sides to bring the matter to a speedy close.
Cameroon Concord News Group believes that the PC Kumba Town saga is the most shameful calamity ever to engulf the PCC. Close members of the Moderator’s team told this publication that he is nursing soreness in his leg and other ailments, which is why he has not issued a public statement on the PC Kumba Town saga. We wish him well and look forward to his public statement on the matter as his health improves.
The ways of the Lord are simplicity, honesty and charity, but that is not what Rev Fonki stands for. With several buildings and business projects in Buea, Limbe, Bamenda and many other towns in Cameroon, he has made the amassment of obscene wealth one of his primary goals.
Under Rev Fonki, PCC congregants must now pay 10% of their incomes as tithes. This questionable scheme has been introduced by concocting a section of congregants’ communion cards to show these payments. Cameroon has a high unemployment rate, and salaries and wages are forever infrequent. Presbyterian secondary and primary school teachers have been going without wages for months and sometimes years. If the PCC can’t pay its teachers despite raking in hundreds of millions from grants, gifts, school fees and aid from abroad, how should these people pay the tithes intended to fuel the flashy and ungodly lifestyle of their Moderator?
Rev Fonki is now a celebrity pastor. On his journeys, there is a convoy with his flamboyant motor vehicle. The poor boy from Akwaya/Menchum is now living the dream. The child who only learned about three square meals daily as an academic concept is now a superstar pastor. Lucky boy! But he must know that he is not living according to the word of the Lord, and the Almighty has distinctive ways of punishing spiritual misconduct. Rev Fonki should draw a lesson from the late Bishop Pius Suh Awah, who ended up on a wheelchair because of his spiritual crimes against Father Kumbha Etienne.
Last year, Rev Fonki started putting together a dubious succession plan by choosing his wife, Rev Perpetua Fonki, as the Communications Secretary of the PCC. A member of PC Bafut said, “Mrs. Pepetua Fonki is the one who runs the PCC now, and she is the mastermind of their numerous financial ventures; whatever she tells Samuel Forba to do, he does. She wants to succeed him as Moderator, and because she is from the Northwest, you will see she will win the position at the next election”.
Rev Fonki Samuel is doing what no other Moderator ever succeeded in; building a deep rift between the Southwest and Northwest factions within the PCC. Thanks to him, there is now an active and robust conversation about breaking the PCC into Northwest and Southwest factions. Although Rev Fonki blames the devil, Manyu and the Bakossi people for his troubles, a source close to him has informed Cameroon Concord News Group that the Northwest faction of the Church will rigorously challenge his fantasy succession plan.
In 2019, the people of Ukraine voted for a comedian and ended up with a serious leader. In 2014, the PCC voted for a Moderator and spiritual leader, and they have had to endure a spiritually vacuous, morally bankrupt, and dangerous comedian. He should summon some humility and leave the PCC now.
By Isong Asu
Cameroon Concord News Group Senior Political Researcher
In the next piece in this series, Cameroon Concord News Group explores the Bible’s teachings on the amassment of vulgar wealth by the Church leaders.